The terms "telephone" and "telephone handset" as used herein are intended to encompass complete telephone communications devices wherein all system components may be incorporated within the portable handset structure. In the cellular and cordless telephone industries relatively small telephones have been developed so as to enable them to be more easily transported on the person or in the transportation conveyance of the user. Examples of compact, folding telephones are represented by U.S. Pat. Nos. D-300,742 of Soren et al (Motorola); 4,897,873 of Beutler et al (Motorola); 5,027,394 of Ono et al (Matsushita-Panasonic) and 5,111,503 of Takagi (Fujitsu Ltd). A portable telephone provided with a fold-out, rod-like microphone boom is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 5,197,091 of Takagi et al, (Fujitsu Ltd.). In each case in order to render the telephones or telephone handsets to small and compact configuration for carrying in personal clothing pockets, handbags etc., the telephones are of jointed, folding construction. In use, a portion of the telephone is folded out typically for positioning the (apparent) microphone of the handset at a suitable distance from the earpiece. Thus, folding telephones are typically relatively short so that they can be more easily stored and transported, although folding telephones are typically quite bulky and are not easily carried in the pockets of clothing.
Significant advances are presently being made in battery technology for use in a wide variety of portable electronic devices such as wireless telephones, portable computers and so on. At the beginning of the wireless telephone industry adequate power supply batteries were quite large and thus the telephones for which they were designed were also quite bulky. Improved electronics efficiency and improved battery technology has allowed portable electronic equipment to become fairly small without any sacrifice from the standpoint of efficiency and effectiveness. In the future, power supply batteries for wireless telephone systems will be of significantly less dimension because of advances in those technologies and because the transmission power requirements of future wireless systems will be orders of magnitude less than present systems. Therefore the future promises handset construction dramatically smaller and more flexibly designed to be easily carried in the pockets of personal clothing. For this purpose, wireless telephones will of necessity be designed with smooth contours so as to readily slide into and from clothing pockets. The present invention is therefore generally directed to a portable telephone construction which is sufficiently small to be readily carried in a shirt pocket or inside suit pocket of the user's clothing and which is smoothly contoured for efficient sliding relation with the user's wearing apparel. Another important feature of wireless telephone systems for the future is an efficient design that will permit the telephone handset to "fit" the contour of the facial anatomy of the user and to have a comfortable "feel" during use. A necessary element of that "feel" is that when the handset is readied for use, that it present a comfortably, ergonomically configured chassis which comfortably fits the hand of the user and is also comfortably configured to naturally correspond to the facial anatomy of the user. Heretofore, the typical cellular portable handset construction has consisted of an inflexible chassis box with ear and mouthpieces being defined at each end of the chassis box and being separated by control and display mechanisms. Even the foldover type phones, sometimes called "flip-phones", are largely a variation of the same "brick-phone" theme, effectively comprising a short chassis box with a flap.
It is desirable to provide a wireless telephone having means for protecting the keypad and/or controls from inadvertent contact and impact with objects in its vicinity, and also protecting the controls of the telephone from contamination by dust and other debris that might be present in its immediate environment. It is desirable to provide a telephone construction that is readily and efficiently collapsible to a very small dimension that may be easily carried in the shirt pocket or suit pocket of a user, or in a handbag, brief case or other carrying device. It is also desirable to provide a collapsible portable telephone construction which, when fully opened, assumes a configuration that readily enables the speaker of the telephone chassis to be positioned at the ear of the user and enables the microphone thereof to be positioned in natural relation to the mouth of the user for optimum telephone communication. For this to occur it is desirable that the collapsible telephone chassis construction have the capability of being pivotally collapsed for storage and transportation and pivotally opened for use to position the earpiece and mouthpiece in properly oriented relation for optimized telephone communication.
In the future, nearly all telephones will be of the wireless variety and will be capable of transportation on the person or in the carry wear of the user. It is therefore desirable to provide a portable telephone device that is highly portable and constructed so as to facilitate efficient personal transportation and handling as well as being convenient to use.